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The Liberator of Mesopotamia 



By 
Basil Mathews 



New York 

Paget Literary Agency 

1918 



The Liberator of ^esoDOtamia 



Basil' Math Ews 

A " 



New York 

Paget Literary Agency 

1918 



f\5 



Copyright, 1918, by 
Basil Mathews 



AUG -8 1918 

©CLA501402 



Liberator of Meso 




LIEUT.-GEN. SIR STANLEY MAUDE, K.C.B. 

I. 

Of all the mysteries of the incomprehensible East, there 
is none stranger than the swift spread of news over vast 
distances v/ithout aid of telegraph or wireless. That in- 
visible, uncontrollable spread of information through the 
myriad bazaars of the cities from Baghdad to Rangoon 
makes and mars the reputation and influence of men and 
empires. It is independent of official bulletins, and defies 
"doctored" nev/s. It is an unseen, irresistible ''Reuters" 
of Asiatic humanity. 

The v^hisper in all those bazaars and in numbered 
villages in Arabia and India v/as that the British moon 
was v/aning. Our prestige drooped and drooped till it 
stood lower than it had fallen for centuries. The vision 
of thousands of British soldiers being led as prisoners into 
the heart of Turkey flashed like lightnin^^ across Asia, and 
visualised itself like a cinematograph on the mind of the 
Indian. And in Asia prestige is worth many army corps. 

At this hour there came up the Tigris a quiet, unas- 
suming English general, whose meditative eyes, oval face, 
and drooping moustache suggested the cultivated English 
country gentleman rather than the head of an imperial 
army. His face was to that of a Hindenburg as the 
head of a stag to that of a bull. Nor had his air and 
person any hint of the all-conquering despot of Oriental 
history. 

But the moustache concealed a mouth Which, though 
entirely without hardness, knew no yielding or fear. And 
the long, dominant nose, if it was not that of a bull-headed 



4 The Liberator of Mesopotamia 

pugilist, Was that of a much more formidable opponent, 
the conqueror who fights not so much with the body as 
with the brain. 



II. 



The General was Sir Stanley Maude. Behind him lay 
a long record of service that was both thorough and unas- 
suming in itself and brilliant in its results. But before 
him lay a task that might well grip with cold' dread the 
bravest and most resolute of men. 

The record is one that is characteristically English in 
that the story carries us out on to the fringe of the Empire 
rather than into the army depot and the training camp. 

Disciplined in thought and temper as a boy in the class- 
rooms and on the playing fields of Eton, Stanley Maude, 
whose father. General Maude, wore the V.C., went on to 
Sandhurst, where both the traditions of his family and 
the powers of his own mind gave him distinction as a 
student of war. 

Within twelve months of entering the Army he had 
seen active service in the Soudan in the engagement of 
Hasheen and at the destruction of Tamai in 1885, Where 
the young subaltern won his first medal and the Khedive's 
star. In the South African War, again, he was out in 
1899 as a Major in the advance on Kimberley, and was 
under fire in a dozen operations in the Orange Free State, 
the Transvaal, and Cape Colony, where he won the 
D.S.O. 

His cool, daring brain, his piercing view into the heart 
of a situation, his power of winning and inspiring con- 
fidence, his blend of gentleness and inflexible will, car- 
ried him at once into those ranges of creative organiza- 
tion where — following the South African War — the 



The Liberator of Mesopotamia 5 

quality of the direction and control of the British mili- 
tary forces was transformed. As Military Secretary to 
the Governor-General of Canada, as Private Secretary to 
our own Secretary of State for War (m 1905), and in 
other capacities, he was (as Colonel Maude) appointed 
to the General Staff at t'he War Office in 1914. 

When the Great War broke out, Britain found swiftly 
in this steel-tempered man of fifty years, with his blithe 
spirit, rich experience, and unchilled enthusiasm, one of 
the perfect instruments ready to her hand for the great 
task of the defence of liberty. Wounded in the first 
year of the war, and mentioned seven times in despatches, 
he became a Divisional Commander in 1915, and by the 
summer of 1916 he had won universal recognition by the 
clean efficiency of all his work, and particularly by the 
inspiring influence of his radiant personality upon the 
men. 

III. 

Lieut.-General Maude v/as now faced by the supreme 
short crowning task of his life. In August, 1916, he was 
made Commander-in-Chief in Mesopotamia. As he went 
up the Tigris between the tawny banks of the ancient 
river, and under the fierce sun, whose rays smite like 
sword-blades, he saw before him everything that could 
quell the spirit. The enemy was flushed with triumph 
and holding thousands of British soldiers as prisoners in 
his hands. The men in his own command, by the in- 
efficiency of organization, the baffling disappointment of 
defeat, and the deadly effects of the tropical climate, had 
been reduced to inanition, weariness, sickness, and de- 
spair. 

Quietly, but simply, and with great firmness, he took 



6 The Liberator of Mesopotamia 

hold. With a silent swiftness that was astonishing in its 
results, though unpretentious and even prosaic in its 
methods, he transformed, with the assistance of his bril- 
liant subordinates, the organisation of supply and the re- 
lief of sickness. 

In the house on the banks of the Tigris where the 
great German strategist. Von der Goltz, had lived and 
died, he worked with that far-seeing, thorough, sensitive 
brain, which visualised quite clearly the goal, and with 
equal care made every preparation for reaching it. It was 
characteristic of him that, while nothing turned the tire- 
less mind from the task before him, yet when he was 
out galloping over the soft earth for his recreation he 
would turn aside, dismount, and enter a hospital to cheer 
'by his presence and inspire by his words the soldiers who 
lay there. The contagion of health and buoyancy of 
spirit, above all, the contagion of high faith, is more 
powerful than the contagion of disease and despair. The 
spirit of Sir Stanley Maude ran like electric power 
through a powerful engine; within six months the dis- 
pirited, nerveless army was alert, alive, and tingling with 
confidence in every limb. 

Splendid in his personal physique, with unbroken health 
and strength, Sir Stanley Maude ruled himself with a 
discipline greater than he imposed on others. Exceed- 
ingly temperate, almost to the point of total abstinence, 
he also stands in a very small group of Army commanders 
who never smoked. 

The tremendous responsibilities and imperial anx- 
ieties that met him where he was might well have quenched 
even his confidence. For he was in the very focus of the 
war. He and his forces stood between Germany and its 
vast dream of dominion in the East. He was placed 
where the interests of three continents — Asia, Africa, and 



The Liberator of Mesopotamia 7 

Europe — converge. The future history of the world in- 
evitably hung on the issue of what was done in Mesopo- 
tamia, and that issue hung upon him. Yet he was never 
overburdened with these responsibilities and anxieties, and 
remained to those who lived in the same house with him 
day by day calm and confident about the issue. 

The Russians failed to co-operate with him, and broke 
up the plans that were made, yet still he went on. Plans 
could be re-made; his spirit remained unbroken. 

IV. 

The sources of that strength did not lie simply in 
physique or even mental temper. They lay in the tremen- 
dous background, invisible, yet universal, of the Powers 
in which he truly believed. The root of his power lay in 
those high beliefs about God and duty. The flush of the 
dawn coming over the desert on a Sunday invariably found 
Sir Stanley Maude kneeling before the altar, taking the 
sj^^mbols of the supreme sacrifice of God in Christ for 
man. 

If there has appeared in this war any knightly figure 
recalling the great Sir Gallahad tradition, it was Sir Stan- 
ley Maude. The temper, purity, and discipline of per- 
sonal life, the enthusiasm for a high cause and belief in 
its ultimate triumph, the utter devotion to achieving its 
victory, the blend of gentleness and hardihood, the unity 
of physical strength, moral courage, and spiritual vision, 
all mark him out as a 'Veray-parfit gentle knight." 

He, at the head of his reorganized and reinspirited 
forces, entered Baghdad. He entered, as he declared 
to the inhabitants, "not as a conqueror, but as a libera- 
tor." He acted as one who believed in the destiny of 
the Arab, and coming to replace the age-long divisive and 
corrosive tyranny of the Turk by a just sway that would 
in turn make place for a government in which the Arab 



8 The Liberator of Mesopotamia 

spirit would restablish its old glories, but in a new way. 
Like magic, the radiating influence of that conquest of 
Baghdad sped through the East. Sir Stanley Maude had 
lifted the debased prestige of the British Empire in Asia 
to a place that has not been surpassed for centuries. 

The end of the man was not only a perfect symbol of 
his own knightly spirit, but of the Empire that he served. 
Groing out to greet an Arab notable and his attendants, 
Sir Stanley Maude had ordered all his own retinue to re- 
frain from drinking anything offered to them, because he 
knew the perils to health; but he himself, out of sheer 
courtliness and desire to serve the purpose and represent 
the spirit of Britain, drank at the hands of an Arab. 

There was "cholera" in the cup. 

******** 

The sands of the desert about Baghdad and Babylon are 
mixed with the dust of conquerors and emperors — Nebu- 
chadnezzar, Alexander the Great, wT'ho died there were 
barely thirty, Haroun al Raschid, and now Sir Stanley 
Maude.. Some of these, like Nebuchadnezzar, had opolu- 
lent, despotic power in their gross and unlovely hands; 
others, like Alexander the Great, lived on the lust of 
conquest. 

Sir Stanley Maude will remain, both in the annals of 
the world and the memory of the Arab, as at once the 
strongest and gentlest conqueror and liberator who ever 
fought on the banks of their immemorial river. 

Basil Mathews. 




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